A Coin in the Mouth

May 7, 2014

“I have this mystical-schmystical idea,”

one of my writing teachers once said,

“that stories exist outside of us somewhere, and it’s our job to get them down properly.”

He was a hard-nosed editor and a robust skeptic, and he confessed this notion five minutes before workshop’s end, as if not to give his own idea too much credence. I suspect, though, that most of us knew what he meant.